


it's biology, baby

by sentientaltype



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: Angry Sex, Domestic Violence, Eventual Romance, F/F, Infidelity, Smut, beca acts like she hates chloe, beca sleeps around a lot, beca's a slacker who doesn't go to class, but I promise it doesn't last long, but like??? it's beca and that's just not possible, chicago is the biggest douche on the planet, chloe may or may not start out dating chicago, intellectual!chloe, not a slowburn but i guess it is?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-03 06:36:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13335525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sentientaltype/pseuds/sentientaltype
Summary: Beca just wants to go to LA.She wants to graduate from Barden as quickly as possible, and the quickest way to her diploma is passing biology. Which she can't do alone.So she gets a tutor.Needless to say, Chloe Beale helps Beca with a lot more biology than she needs for class.Rated M for smut and language





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hey guys! this is a new fic i've been working on and i'm really excited to share it with you all!
> 
> if you read the previous version of this fic, i have changed it a little and tweaked my plan for the plot, as well as added a lot more to the chapter, so you may want to read again!
> 
> NOTE: there's a little mention of drink-drugging (as in roofies at a party) but it's fleeting. however, if you think this may be triggering for you, please proceed with caution.

“You’re kind of a bitch, you know,” the nameless blonde says as she grabs her clothes that are strewn around Beca’s mess of a room that she peeled off of her last night.

“So I’ve been told,” Beca shrugs. “Look, Carrie, is it?”

“Cammie,” the girl corrects quietly.

“Right, Courtney,” Beca smirks, screwing up the girl’s name a second time, though she knows damn well that her name isn’t Courtney, “I thought I made it clear I wasn’t looking for anything serious.”

“You did,” Cammie stands up fully clothed. “I’m gonna go, and leave you be, since you’re clearly having an identity crisis. Call me when you figure out who you are.” Beca has to grip her bedsheets to restrain herself, gritting her teeth as she defends herself while the blonde exits the room.

“Identity’s a bitch,” she yells at the door. “That’s why I don’t have one.”

*

“Beca, there’s no need to be rude about it,” Jesse says from the other side of the CD shelf. “I was simply suggesting that you allow one of these hookups to stay longer than five minutes after they wake up.”

“They don’t want to be around me, and I don’t want to be around them,” Beca shrugs. “I’m always clear about what we’re doing, and if they get it twisted, then that’s their problem.”

“You’re almost twenty-two, Beca, aren’t you getting a little tired of being alone?”

“Uh, no,” Beca scoffs. 

“Look, all I’m saying is it wouldn’t hurt to have someone to talk to that isn’t me or the girl who throws pens at you until you give her your Poli-Sci homework,” Jesse comments and Beca just rolls her eyes.

She doesn’t need anyone.

She’s got herself.

It’s her senior year at Barden, and the second she graduates, she’s going to LA, and that’s that. Making friends at Barden will only complicate that, so Beca decided on her first day of freshman year that she was  _ not  _ going to talk to a single person on campus unless absolutely necessary.

Her plan has always been as follows: Graduate high school, go to college because her father decided to force her, get a job at the Barden radio station, graduate college, move to LA and become a producer. Anything, or anyone else she happens to do in passing is purely coincidental.

“I think I’ll survive,” Beca replies curtly. Jesse’s attempts to continue nagging her about making new friends, or whatever it is he’s going on about, are thwarted by Luke, who’s headed out for the night and enlists Beca to run the station overnight.

Jesse whines to him, the same way he does every single night, saying that it’s his turn to run the station since Beca gets to do it every time Luke leaves.

“Jesse, the last time I let you run the set list through, you put three songs on and let them loop over and over again,” Luke deadpans. “For  _ nine hours. _ ”

“And I will live with that mistake for the rest of my life,” Jesse replies and Beca can’t help but laugh at the exchange on her way into the booth. She queues up her Thursday night playlist and starts the first song, introducing herself and the track quickly before leaning back in the chair.

She pulls out her phone in order to check her emails, deleting junk email after junk email and favoriting a quiz recommendation from Buzzfeed (she’ll undoubtedly revisit that later.) Beca’s about done with the dozen emails in her inbox when her eyes flit across the subject of one from the Dean of Students: Drop in Class Grade.

“Shit,” Beca mumbles to herself as she expands the message.

_ Ms. Mitchell, _

_ It has come to our attention that you are once again at risk for failure of Introductory Biology 101, taught by Dr. Vinther. In case you need a refresher, since you haven’t attended a lecture in over two weeks, the class is taught at 11 AM on Tuesdays and Fridays. _

_ Dr. Vinther and I have decided, since you require this prerequisite to graduate in the spring, that you will have a graduate student tutor you in the class this semester. _

_ I have CC’d your tutor in this email, her address should be visible above. _

_ Best, _

_ Dr. Spencer, Dean of Students _

“Fuck,” Beca groans. “I can’t believe this.”

“Can’t believe what?” Jesse asks abruptly, his head leaning in the door of the booth, making Beca jump.

“Geez, man, we need to put a bell on you or something,” Beca mutters.

“What’s going on?” Jesse is eyeing Beca skeptically, probably because on a normal night, Beca would be sacked out by now, legs kicked up on the desk with her beanie tugged over her eyes.

“I’m failing Biology,” Beca admits. She’s not quite sure what possesses her to share this information with Jesse, who she finds insufferable during their radio station shifts, but the cat’s out of the bag now, so Beca runs with it. “The dean is giving me a tutor.”

“Oh, shit,” Jesse gnaws on his bottom lip. “What are you gonna do?”

“Well, I need one more science to graduate, so…” Beca trails off. “I guess I’m gonna email that tutor.”

*

Beca emails her tutor soon after Jesse’s interruption, and asks if they can meet after her class tomorrow. She falls asleep before she gets a chance to read the reply, and she doesn’t check her messages when she wakes up, but when Beca leaves the lecture hall, she’s in for a rude awakening. 

“Are you Beca?” an overly excited redhead asks her, and she just nods, gritting her teeth.  _ Please don’t be my tutor.  _ “Hi! I’m Chloe Beale, your new biology tutor!” The girl, Chloe, claps her hands together and Beca thinks this can’t get any worse but then she  _ jumps up and down,  _ in front of fifty odd people, and she seems totally okay with it. 

It’s gonna be a long semester. 

“Um, hey,” Beca mumbles, shoving her hands even deeper into her pockets.

“So, when do you want to get started?” Chloe asks, but it doesn’t seem like she’s asking Beca as supposed to thinking out loud. “We can meet once a week, or twice if you feel like you need it, how well do you think you understand the unit?”

Beca can’t answer that, because she has no idea what unit they’re even on.

Chloe seems to take her silence the way Beca means it, so she just nods.

“Twice a week might be better,” Chloe decides, and Beca refuses to meet her eyes for fear that they’ll be full of judgement. “Do you have a class after this one?”

“Uh, no, I don’t,” Beca supplies in stutters.  _ Get it together, Mitchell, before she thinks you need speech therapy too.  _

“Great! We can meet on Tuesdays and Fridays at,” she checks her expensive looking watch, “half-twelve in the library? That way you have half an hour to get across campus.”

“Yep, sounds good,” Beca nods, but she couldn’t repeat Chloe’s words back to her if she asked because  _ okay,  _ Chloe is hot. 

Like, really hot. 

“I’ll send you an email with it all written out, so that you don’t forget,” Chloe says with a wink and Beca’s fairly certain Chloe knows that she wasn’t listening. “Okay, see you on Tuesday?”

“Yeah, Tuesday,” Beca repeats but Chloe’s already halfway down the hall, walking backwards and waving at Beca until she bumps into a frazzled student who curses her out. 

Beca returns to her apartment with a deep scowl etched in her face, and she can’t decide whether she’s dreading Tuesday or looking forward to it. 

*

Beca spends the weekend holed up in her room, every single handout she’s ever gotten from Dr. Vinther and recently printed from Instructure spread out on her bed, along with her two class textbooks and laptop with review sites open. Beca tells herself she’s studying this much in order to actually pass her midterm next moth, but she knows damn well that she doesn’t want to look like an idiot in front of her tutor. 

It only took Chloe twenty minutes after their first encounter to block out the rest of their meetings for this month, detailing what concepts they would cover on which days. The agenda for Tuesday contains phylogeny, which Beca gapes at when she reads it, because she’s never even  _ heard  _ of whatever that may be. 

So she spends her Friday night laying on her stomach, eyes way too close to her screen as she tries to remember the levels of lineage organization. After she gets the practice question she’s stuck on wrong for the third time, she slams her computer shut with a grunt before flopping her head down amidst the papers containing foreign information covering her mattress.

“Should’ve just gone to class in the first place,” Beca says into the duvet, rolling her eyes at the fact that she’s really talking to herself about herself. 

Beca drags herself out of bed and to her local coffee shop, an independant little hipster spot that Beca discovered on a study break, much like the one she’s on now. A bell jingles as she pushes the door open, and she immediately wishes she hadn’t come in.

In the far corner, Beca’s eyes land on a bright red head of hair, facing away from the door at a table with two other young women.

Beca’s pretty sure it’s Chloe.

And if it is, she does  _ not  _ want to get anywhere near the peppy graduate student and her likely equally peppy friends. 

So, after being shoved out of the way by an exiting customer, Beca finds her bearings and gets in line to grab her coffee. She successfully orders, waits and picks up her drink without being seen, and she rushes out of the coffee joint as quickly as her little legs can carry her. 

As she stands in the elevator of her complex, Beca makes a quick decision: she’s  _ never  _ going back to that coffee shop.

*

Beca flounders through Tuesday’s lecture, taking a meager half-page of notes on speciation or whatever nonsense Dr. Vinther doles out in his thick Danish accent. Her leg is bouncing up and down for the second half of class, bumping awkwardly against the mini-desk.

“Hey, sorry, do you mind?” the girl sitting next to her gestures towards Beca’s general area and nods her head at the desk, clearly on the verge of irritation over the banging sound Beca’s leg is causing.

“Shit, sorry,” she halts her movements and gives the girl what is supposed to be an apologetic smile but ends up translating as a creepy half-smirk, and the tall girl cringes just enough to make Beca want to crawl into a hole and die.

“I’ve never seen you in class before, are you a transfer?” the girl asks politely during one of the many lulls in the professor’s speech. 

“No, I’m, uh- I’m a senior,” Beca explains quickly. “I’m about to fail, so I figured I should start showing up.”

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry,” the girl stammers, her demeanor having completely shifted due to the new information. “I’m Emily, I’m a freshman.”

“Okay,” Beca says wryly before she shakes her head. “I mean, I’m Beca,” she tries again and Emily looks much more satisfied with her second response. The younger girl settles back into her chair and resumes typing away on her laptop. Beca leans a little to her right and sees the header of Emily’s document:  _ October 16 Intro to Biology Notes.  _

“Hey,” Beca taps on Emily’s shoulder, “would you mind sharing that with me?” Emily nods quickly and asks for her email, typing it into the “share” bar and clicking send.

“It should be in your inbox,” Emily smiles brightly and Beca doesn’t find herself recoiling from the expression.

“Thanks, I’ll get you next time,” Beca offers but she knows that Emily won’t take her up on it, considering it’s over a month into the school year and this is about the third biology lecture she’s ever attended. Dr. Vinther dismisses class and Beca barely even has a chance to stand up when she feels her phone buzz in her pocket. She retrieves it and scowls at the notification, wishing she’d never supplied her phone number in an email sent on Saturday.

**Chloe (12:01):** _ Hey Beca, see you at the library in half an hour! I’ll be on the fourth floor in the back wing, please bring your notes from Friday and today’s classes! _

Beca thanks her lucky stars that she can’t sit still, because if it hadn’t been for her semi-awkward conversation with Emily, she’d be screwed for her first session with the woman Beca colloquially refers to as “the ginger” in her head. She types out a reply on her way down the stairs to the door.

**Beca (12:02):** _ yep see you there _

Beca’s response is simple and possibly a bit lame, but she just can’t find it in herself to match Chloe’s enthusiasm about learning, especially not when the whole situation makes Beca feel lackluster and uneducated. She exits the hall lethargically and slinks across the quad in a similar fashion, in no rush to get to the library, especially not once she pulls her headphones up over her ears and hits shuffle on her playlist, a monthly mix titled “october vibes.” Beca finds herself stopping several times to observe the changing season, summer becoming a distant memory for the students of Barden as increasingly cold air nips at their noses and the tips of their ears, green pigment sinking out of the leaves and turning them various autumn shades as they tumble to the ground and accumulate in crunching piles along the paths. 

It’s only twenty-five after by the time Beca arrives, so she loiters around the entrance of the library for three more minutes before finally entering and humming “Hunger of the Pine” by alt-J as the elevator climbs to the fourth floor. Once she makes a left and enters the back wing, Beca immediately finds Chloe amidst the sea of students, her hair making her stick out, but not necessarily in a bad way. Chloe waves her down and Beca just nods, fighting to keep the grimace off her face, because even though she’s been classified a bitch by the many, she still has manners. 

“Hey Beca!” Chloe chirps and wraps Beca in a one sided hug. Beca curses herself for not guessing that Chloe has no regard for personal space boundaries.

“Hey,” Beca wiggles out of Chloe’s grip and sits down in the empty chair Chloe’s left.

“So, we’ll get right to it,” Chloe says with an air of confidence.  _ Of course she’s confident, she already knows the content.  _ “What parts of the phylogeny chapter didn’t you understand?”

Beca freezes.

She wonders if Chloe understands what it feels like to know so little about something that you can’t even figure out where to start.

“Don’t even know what you don’t know, huh?” Chloe smiles and Beca searches for the mocking tone in her voice, but she comes up empty. 

It’s becoming slightly difficult for Beca to pretend that Chloe is the same as everyone who’s ever tried to teach her anything.

“Sorry,” Beca runs a hand through her hand after removing her headphones.

“Don’t apologize,” Chloe shakes her head softly, her smile never wavering. Beca thinks that smiling like that all the time must hurt her cheeks.  “I totally understand. I was about to fail Biochemistry my junior year, but thankfully my boyfriend was a biochem major. I didn’t even know what I didn’t know, so it’s totally okay.”

_ Boyfriend.  _

The word swirls around in Beca’s brain, the way the word tumbled from Chloe’s lips etched into her mind, full of life and lifted and melodic at the end, like it was Chloe’s favorite part of the sentence. 

_ Chloe has a boyfriend.  _

“Right,” Chloe claps her hands together and snaps Beca out of her trance, pushing her to grab her laptop and open her (see also: Emily’s) notes from class today.

“This is on speciation,” Beca says after reading the heading on the document. 

“Okay, we should start with the lineage order so that you can properly classify species when we get to the next chapter,” Chloe turns Beca’s computer towards her after raising an eyebrow and receiving Beca’s consent, pulling up a phylogenetic tree and delving into the different clades and sister species.

Beca follows along as best as she can, but once she starts to trail off and fall behind, Chloe immediately goes back and recaps, or asks her a question about what she’s just said, or even asks Beca to tell it back to her in her own words. The first few times it makes Beca nervous, but when the silence stretches for too long and Beca admits embarrassingly that she doesn’t know, Chloe just smiles.

There seems to be a common theme in Chloe. She’s a great teacher in Beca’s book, and she explains the difference between a derived and ancestral trait with relative ease, her hands moving wildly about the space in front of her. 

And Chloe smiles. 

A  _ lot.  _

It bothers Beca to no end that someone could be so cheerful even while discussing the most mundane of topics and teaching someone with the memory of a baked potato.

And Chloe is patient with Beca, which student Beca appreciates, but normal, people-hating Beca does not.

She finds Chloe’s entire demeanor both irritating and intimidating, the emotions evoked from the redhead’s behavior muddling together in a hodge-podge of anger and humility that Beca is not equipped to filter through right now.

So instead, she lets the thoughts ruminate in her brain like a marinade, honing in on the sound of Chloe’s voice as she details the differences between monophyletic and paraphyletic segments.

Time flies by quickly and before Beca knows it, it’s been an hour and a half, and Chloe’s wrapping things up.

“So, do you feel more confident about phylogeny?” Chloe asks with that damn award-winning smile that never falters. 

“I- yeah,” Beca says and pulls her laptop back towards her, shoving it ungracefully in her backpack.

“You’re not just saying that to make me feel better, right?” Chloe raises a skeptical eyebrow that makes Beca more nervous than she already was under Chloe’s gaze. 

“No, I actually understand,” Beca shakes her head. “It helps that I can understand your accent.” Chloe throws her head back in laughter at Beca’s joke, laughing a lot harder than is deserved considering the ease and bad quality of Beca’s delivery.

“I know how you feel about Vinther,” Chloe nods. “He’s… a lot. He was my professor too.” Beca nods with a weak smile, but she doesn’t know where else to go with this miniscule bit of conversation. 

“Okay, well, I’ve got to run,” Chloe stands up and quickly gathers the few items she brought with her. “I have class, but feel free to text me if you have any questions, okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” Beca manages a quick smile and watches the older woman saunter away, turning around halfway and waving excitedly at Beca. She rolls her eyes but her hand still raises in a curt movement that can barely be characterized as a wave, but it’s a new effort from Beca that she would never dole out to the average joe.

Chloe is not the average joe.

Beca’s getting very close to banging her head against the table in order to force the image of Chloe’s smile out of her brain, but she settles for a quick slap to the cheek before she shoves her papers in a folder and darts out of the library, jostling cliques and even knocking a book out of a freshman’s hand for her own amusement. 

Once she gets outside, she sends Jesse a text.

**Beca (14:06):** _ party tonight? _

**Beca (14:06):** _ need to get really drunk _

It only takes a few seconds for Jesse’s snarky reply.

**Jesse (14:06):** _ Don’t act like you need an excuse to get drunk!  _

Beca laughs to herself, though it’s more of an expulsion of air, and types out her reply as she starts her walk back home. 

**Beca (14:07):** _ i don’t need an excuse to get drunk, but i need an excuse to hook up with someone _

**Jesse (14:09):** _Wow, how long has it been?_ _  
_ **Beca (14:10):** _………_

**Beca (14:10):** _ six days _

**Jesse (14:12):** _ You know what? I’m not even gonna say anything about that. I’ll find a good party for tonight, just give me a few minutes.  _

Beca slides her phone back in her pocket and reflexively crosses her street to pick up her daily coffee, but she seriously reconsiders because of the cult of cheery grad students she came across on Friday. She remembers that Chloe said she had class, so Beca throws caution to the wind and pushes the door open. 

“Hey, Beca,” the barista, a dark haired man named Theo, says with a smile. Beca just nods, wishing she hadn’t become a regular customer that workers can recognize.

“The usual?” Theo asks, already reaching for the largest coffee cup before Beca nods again. She swipes her card and doesn’t even wait for her receipt before retreating to the far corner of the shop, putting as much distance between her and Theo as possible. She’s just grabbed her coffee and left the shop when her phone buzzes in a heartbeat fashion, a vibration she set specifically for Jesse so that she’d know when she could ignore him. Beca checks her phone in the elevator of her complex, a ghost of a smile gracing her lips as she reads the text.

**Jesse (14:21):** _ I know you’re not a fan of sororities, but it’s the only thing going on tonight. What do you say to a house party? Hot chicks and frat boys? A bi girl’s dream. _

**Beca (14:21):** _ for the last time, i’m not bi, but you know i’m down for a good house party.  _

Jesse responds with a series of exclamation points and emoji, and Beca can’t even be bothered to respond with an equally irritating amount of emojis.

*

Jesse “swings by” Beca’s apartment around an hour before the party’s set to start, but they end up lounging around nursing beers and blasting Beca’s pre-party playlist until it’s much later than they planned on hanging around for and Jesse’s asking if she even wants to go. 

“Of course I do,” Beca scoffs. “You’re the one who insisted on pregaming even though it’s a sorority house with more vodka inside it than brain cells.”

“Okay, okay,” Jesse throws his hands up in defense, “but you’re not wearing that if you want to get laid.”

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” Beca asks, taking a look at her flannel and black jeans, paired with a pair of Timberlands that she’s had since her junior year of high school.

“You’re not seriously asking me what’s wrong with  _ that _ ,” Jesse deadpans and drags her into her room, rifling through her closet while she stands frozen beside him, praying he doesn’t force her into something awful that Beca had forgotten she owned. 

“This is perfect,” Jesse holds up a black bodycon that Beca’s only worn once, and she can’t even remember the occasion.

Beca can’t exactly argue with him, because there’s nothing wrong with the dress and she frankly has nothing better.

“Fuck it,” she mumbles and shoves him out of the room, changing quickly before fishing out her only pair of heels from the depths of her shoe rack. Beca doesn’t bother touching up her makeup, save for a swipe of her favorite lip gloss, before busting out of her room and dragging Jesse out the door.

*

The sorority house is just as loud as Beca imagines, the tasteless top 40 audible from a block away. Beca’s never been to a party at this particular house, but Jesse took extra precaution to make sure it was no invite required, because Beca can’t imagine having to scam her way into a beer-pong and keg party. 

Jesse pushes the heavy front door open, the music becoming exponentially louder and making Beca’s teeth vibrate. Beca’s a fan of playing her music loud, but if it’s literally shaking her bones, it may not be such a good idea. She immediately loses Jesse in the crowd and makes her way to the kitchen alone, a blond haired man she’s never met before running the makeshift bar. He hands her a solo cup full of an unidentified liquid but Beca doesn’t take it, instead asking him to make it again, this time in front of her.

She’s never been drugged before, and she’s not about to start tonight. 

The guy complies, sliding the new drink across the counter and Beca downs it in one gulp, grabbing the next one he’s just made and sauntering off to watch the swarm of sweaty college students jumping to the beat. 

Beca enjoys people-watching a lot more than she enjoys communicating, so she usually leans back on the wall and lets her eyes flit over possible prospects, weeding out the creeps and the ones already lip-locked with another. Beca’s gaze travels to the door, and she sees it around the same time she hears it over the music.

“OMG, you came!” one of the sorority sisters squeals at an unnatural level, letting the door open further and reveal the topic of conversation amongst the cult of sisters. 

It’s Chloe.

Chloe, Beca’s biology tutor.

Chloe, who was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt during their session earlier, and who’s now wearing a low cut dress that hugs tightly to her curves.

Chloe, who Beca  _ really  _ needs to stop staring at, but she can’t because Chloe’s just looked her way and she’s staring into Beca’s eyes and she winks and  _ oh, God.  _

Beca doesn’t even notice that her bottom lip is drawn between her teeth until it’s too late, Chloe’s already seen it and that signature smile has turned into a smirk and she’s making it increasingly difficult for Beca to pretend that she finds Chloe’s smile annoying. 

Beca takes a long sip of her drink, and by the time she sets the cup down, Chloe is lost in the sea of people, but Beca, with a newfound determination, is set on finding her tutor by the end of the night. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this update took a while! i've been super busy, but i'm trying to keep the updates a bit more regular now.

 

“Becaw!”  Jesse throws his arms around Beca’s shoulders from behind, around a half hour after she saw Chloe walk into the party. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

“Chloe’s here,” she says in his ear, as if Jesse knows who Chloe is.

He doesn’t have the privilege.

“Who?” Jesse slurs. “Ooh, is that a hot girl? Get some, Becaw!”

“She’s my  _ tutor _ , Jesse,” Beca hisses at him, but she can’t shake the thought of getting some from Chloe. She’s willing to bet the older girl’s cheeks would flush to match the color of her hair, Chloe’s hands tangling in Beca’s locks and tugging her this way and that, arching her chest into Beca’s mouth and-

“Hey, come back to me,” Jesse taps her on both cheeks. “You should go find her!”

“What? No!” Beca shoves him off. “No way, I have to see her again, and that’s against my hook-up rules. Besides, she has a boyfriend.”

“Hey, Beca!” a voice shouts from nearby and Beca doesn’t even have to look up to know that it’s Chloe. Beca recognizes the shrill tone of voice, piercing through the soundwaves of EDM bouncing off the walls. Jesse wiggles his eyebrows and saunters off, while Chloe wastes no time in sidling up next to Beca at her place by the kitchen bar, asking the frat boy for a drink and leaning herself against the bar.

“What brings you to a sorority party? I didn’t know grad students still slunk around these parts,” Beca attempts to say confidently, but her voice comes out breathier and higher than she’d intended. She blames it on the alcohol.

(It’s definitely  _ not  _ the alcohol.)

“This was my old sorority,” Chloe explains. “After the Bellas disbanded, this is where we came for our senior year.”

“The Bellas?” Beca asks confusedly.

“The Barden Bellas,” Chloe repeats as if it will somehow clarify something in Beca’s mind, but the brunette just stares blankly at Chloe, hoping she’ll get the memo. “Oh! Sorry, I just assume everyone has heard of us.”

“Right,” Beca says with a laugh, and she realizes something: she’s  _ smiling.  _ Beca is having a conversation with someone and  _ smiling,  _ and the second she notices, the smile drops from her face. 

“We were the all-female a cappella group on campus,” Chloe says wistfully. “We could have won nationals, but Aubrey got a bit nervous and-”

“-threw up on stage,” Beca finishes for her. “Oh my God, I’ve seen that video on YouTube dozens of times, but I didn’t know that was Barden!”

“Oh, you’ve seen it,” Chloe frowns, and suddenly Beca is overrun with guilt for something she found funny not five seconds ago. 

“Hey, sorry,” Beca apologizes and before she knows it, Beca’s placing her hand overtop of Chloe’s and squeezing. 

_ What the fuck?  _ Beca screams internally, her eyes widening at her own actions. She’s about to open her mouth and let apology after apology spill out, but Chloe locks eyes with her and does the one thing that’s guaranteed to screw an embarrassingly delicate person like Beca: she  _ smiles.  _

“It’s okay,” Chloe shrugs, making no move to pull her hand out from under Beca’s, so Beca just leaves hers where it is. “Anyway, we couldn’t get enough members my senior year and had to disband, so Aubrey and I pledged to Sigma Kappa Chi.”

“That sucks, I’m sorry,” Beca says with a solemn expression, even though she finds the idea of being in an a cappella group totally dumb and lame. “So you sing, then?”

“I used to,” Chloe takes a sip of her drink before continuing, “before I got nodes.”

Beca’s heart sinks.

As a musician herself, although not a singer, Beca can sympathize with the detrimentality of a vocalist getting nodes.

“I’m really sorry, Chloe,” Beca takes a deep breath before flipping her hand over and lacing their fingers together. “I can’t imagine what that’d be like. I guess it’d be like if I broke both thumbs, or something.”

“You mix?” Chloe asks with her eyebrows raised, clearly taking a wild guess as to what Beca’s passion could be that it would involve her thumbs, and Beca’s amazed that she’s right.

“Uh-huh,” Beca says mid-swallow, the alcohol burning her esophagus on the way down and settling in her stomach. Beca’s starting to feel the effects of her several drinks (two, maybe five?), the cherry vodka mix thrumming in her veins and causing her eyes to drop to Chloe’s lips as she gushes about “how cool it is to meet a fellow musician.”

Chloe has  _ really  _ nice lips. 

“You should play me something of yours,” Chloe says as she lets go of Beca’s hand in order to run hers through her wavy hair. 

“Oh, I just do covers,” Beca shakes her head and shoves her hand in the pocket of her leather jacket. Now, the statement isn’t entirely false. She mostly does covers, although she’s got something in the works of her own that she isn’t comfortable sharing quite yet. 

“That’s a shame,” Chloe leans closer to Beca’s face, her lips brushing Beca’s ear as she whispers: “I bet you’re great with your fingers.”

If this were anyone else, Beca would have Chloe pinned against the countertop with both hands up her shirt by now.

But this is not just any girl at a party, or any guy at the club.

This is Chloe, who has a biochemist boyfriend, and who teaches her what is basically remedial biology, and who smiles more often than a child on a free-for-all in a candy store. 

So it takes all the self control in Beca’s tiny body to pull her head back away from Chloe, putting a torturous six inches of space between their faces (more specifically, their lips).

“I should go find my friends,” Chloe says, her voice barely audible over the beat drop.

“Go on then,” Beca eggs her on, mostly so that she can go lock herself in a dark upstairs bathroom and scream into the void. 

“But I kinda just… want to stay here with you,” Chloe’s hand brushes up and down the length of Beca’s arm, her hand then slipping bravely into Beca’s jacket and settling on her waist. 

There’s a dragging of Chloe’s voice and a gloss over Chloe’s blue eyes, and Beca frowns.

She’s drunk.

And that means that nothing Chloe is doing means anything.

Beca could be sad about that fact, she could find Jesse and whine that the hot girl doesn’t  _ really  _ want to talk to her, she could get another drink, chug it, and chase it with another drink, or she could just go home and sulk, accepting that she’s going to fail biology because she never wants to face Chloe again. 

But instead, Beca does something that she can only describe as “drunkenly stupid.”

“I don’t think your boyfriend would approve of that,” Beca murmurs, not too far from Chloe’s ear. The two women have moved in closer to each other, as if there are invisible strings attached to their hips that are pulling taut and causing their bodies to press against one another. Beca blames it simply on gravity, citing a natural gravitational pull between their bodies and their lips in order to excuse how close they are. 

“Maybe not,” Chloe shrugs off Beca’s jacket and lets it fall to the likely dirty floor below them, Beca feeling the cool air on her arms, “but do you see him anywhere?”

“I’m not a homewrecker,” Beca admonishes, and she knows that the best thing to do in this situation is put a considerable amount of space between her and Chloe’s insanely attractive body, but Beca knows that Chloe knows neither of them will do it. 

“I didn’t say that you were,” Chloe smiles, and it’s contagious, spreading to Beca like a virulent and pathogenic virus with just one glance down to Chloe’s mouth. “You should smile more. You have a beautiful smile. And a beautiful face.” And before Beca’s brain can compute anything that’s happening, Chloe’s lips are on her cheek and she’s gone, Beca’s eyes searching frantically for a head of red hair but coming up empty.

So Beca spots Jesse by the keg, tells him that she’s leaving, and heads home.

She’s almost at her apartment when she realizes that her jacket is still lying on the trash-covered floor of the sorority kitchen, and she can’t be bothered to turn around.

*

Beca is rudely awakened the next morning by a pounding at her door. She struggles out of bed, tangled up in her sheets and falling to the floor with a thud before trudging lethargically to the door.

“Who is it?” she shouts, voice scratchy and thick with sleep.

“Your very angry friend Jesse,” Jesse replies, shouldering past Beca as soon as she unlocks the door. “I can’t believe you left me at the party!”  
“Sorry,” Beca shrugs, even though she’s not sorry at all. From the little she remembers from the night before, Beca was on the verge of entering dangerous territory. “I did tell you that I was leaving, though.”

“You could’ve at least called me an Uber,” Jesse grumbles as he peers into Beca’s fridge. “I had to sleep on the sorority floor and woke up to a bunch of shrieking blondes!”

“Don’t act like that wasn’t a dream come true,” Beca puts on a pot of coffee.

“Oh, I saw you getting cozy with the redhead,”  Jesse smirks. “Did you leave in such a hurry to get her in bed?”

“Shut  _ up _ , Jesse,” Beca groans, her voice tense and serious. Jesse holds his hands up in defense and puts a pan on the stove with a clunk. 

“Wow, sore subject?”

“I just really don’t want to talk about it,” Beca whines as she reaches for her container of Advil and a glass of water, pushing two over to her friend who’s just cracked an egg over the pan.

“Sounds like you want to talk about it,” Jesse says. “Come on, what’s her deal?”

“I told you, she’s my tutor,” Beca sighs. 

“But you want her to be more than your tutor.”

“I don’t even know her!” Beca crosses her arms.

“So get to know her,” Jesse shuts down Beca’s excuses like he always does. It’s one of Beca’s favorite and least favorite things about Jesse: she can’t get away with any of her usual bullshit with him. He forces Beca to acknowledge that she does indeed have hopes and dreams, as well as a heart, and her walls become non-functioning with him. 

“But-”

“No buts, Beca,” Jesse says sternly. “From what I saw, she was pretty into you, so why don’t you go for it?”

“Even if she does like me,” Beca replies, “she likes her boyfriend more.”

“That can change,” Jesse smirks and Beca can tell that he’s got an idea. “And I can help you.”

*

“I don’t want to wear these to class,” Beca tugs at the leather pants Jesse has forced her into. Her co-worker insisted that he come over before her biology lecture to help her “dress to impress.” He clearly doesn’t understand the simple concept of comfort.

“They’re hot,” Jesse gives Beca a quick once-over. “Come on, do you  _ ever  _ stop scowling? You look great, and I bet Chloe’s boyfriend doesn’t look this hot in leather pants.” Beca pictures a Chris Hemsworth look alike in the tight clothing, and she immediately shakes her head to rid her mind of the terrifying image. 

“I still think this is too forward to do sober,” Beca complains, even though they both know she’s searching for a way out of Jesse’s plan to “make Chloe as hot for student” as she is “hot for teacher.” Beca wasted no time yesterday pointing out that Chloe isn’t actually her teacher. 

“Are you for real?” Jesse gawks at her. “What about it is forward? All you’re doing is dressing up a little. We didn’t even have to go out and buy these, you already owned them!”

“But-” Beca starts but Jesse shoves her out of her room and into the hallway of her apartment complex, telling her to “get a grip and get the girl,” before slamming the door shut. Beca crosses her arms and waits patiently for Jesse to realize his mistake, scowling when the door reopens and a sheepish Jesse hands Beca her backpack. 

Beca uses the time the walk to campus takes her to ponder on why she’s even trying to impress Chloe. Sure, the grad student is attractive, but she’s too smart for Beca, and definitely unavailable. Beca’s not a fan of feeling inferior in her relationships, hence why she singles out the men and women with rocks for brains on campus. Beca’s heard from her father and many others time and time again that she could do well in school if she applied herself, that she’s smart but has no drive. And as much as she knows it’s probably true, the nagging words of parents and professors don’t make her want to do any better. As Beca enters the lecture hall and slides into a seat close to the back, she decides that Chloe piqued her interest because the redhead has such a thirst for knowledge and intellect, and Beca wants to be more like her.

(Beca wants Chloe to like her much more than she wants to _be_ like her. But she spends the entire lecture hanging off of Vinther’s ever accented word, just so that she doesn’t look stupid in a later tutoring session.)

After a class that Emily described to Beca as “enlightening” on her way out of the hall, Beca finds herself looking forward to her session with Chloe. She feels nervousness settle in the pit of her stomach at the thought of discussing the events of Tuesday’s party with the redhead, but Beca pulls her headphones over her ears and shuffles her playlist entitled “calm,” letting “Pictures” by Benjamin Francis Leftwich play on high volume. 

Beca ducks into the bathroom on the first floor of the library, checking her makeup in the mirror and even going as far as to check her own ass out in the pants that are cutting off her circulation.  _ What the fuck am I doing?  _ she thinks to herself on the way out of the bathroom, continuing to chastise herself for the uncharacteristic behavior as she stands in the elevator. Once she reaches the fourth floor, she doesn’t have to search the back wing for long before her eyes find a head of red hair that she seems to be unconsciously searching for. Chloe’s back is turned away from her, so she makes a show of circling to the other side of the table in order to draw her tutor’s attention from the book in front of her. 

“What are you reading?” Beca asks as she slides into the seat across from Chloe, smirking a little as Chloe’s eyes widen, trailing shamelessly along her torso. Beca makes a mental note to leave the top three buttons of her flannel open more often. 

“Uh, it’s called ‘The Consciousness Paradox: Consciousness, Concepts, and Higher-order Thoughts,’” Chloe reads off the front cover. “I just started it, someone recommended it to me.”

“Your boyfriend?” Beca asks, and she doesn’t hear the venom in her voice until the words have lifted off her tongue. Chloe’s smile falters, and Beca immediately winces at the notion that she made Chloe Beale stop smiling. 

“Actually, my friend Aubrey,” Chloe corrects and Beca can tell that she didn’t mean for it to sound as pointed as it does, but it still stings a little. Beca wills herself to calm down and stop taking jabs at the older woman when she’s done nothing wrong. “Should we get started?” Chloe interrupts Beca’s thoughts and Beca nods, getting her textbook and laptop out and pulling up the document from today’s class containing Beca’s rambling explanations of the concepts in ways that she could understand.

“I see your note-taking style has changed since your last class,” Chloe comments and raises an eyebrow.  _ Busted _ . After reading over the document, she continues. “These notes seem to be a bit more your style. Did you understand the content better this way, when you compared habitat isolation to the window attendant not understanding Spongebob’s accent?”

“Pretty good, right?” Beca smiles, feeling proud of herself for coming up with the comparison.

“I wouldn’t know, I’ve never seen Spongebob,” Chloe shrugs.

“Woah, seriously?” Beca questions and Chloe just nods. “No way. Spongebob is like, the best Nickelodeon cartoon of all time! How have you never seen it?”

“I didn’t watch a lot of TV as a kid,” Chloe says.

“Then what did you do?” 

“I read a lot of books, and did a lot of weird ‘science experiments,’” Chloe uses air quotes as she speaks. “I would mix every lotion and cleaning solution in my bathroom cabinets to see how they’d react.”

“So what you’re saying is you were born a science nerd,” Beca says and can’t help but smile at Chloe’s giggle. 

“I mean, yeah,” Chloe replies. “Everyone in my family is either a lawyer or in liberal arts, so I’m the odd one out at home.”

“What do you want to do after grad school?”

“Teach, hopefully,” Chloe says wistfully and Beca pictures Chloe in front of a classroom full of students, teaching them diligently and making them as excited about the material as she is. “I’d love to teach high school students, but I’m the only person I know who thinks it’s a good idea.” Chloe’s usual easy smile is replaced by a tired expression, her mouth quirking down into a subtle frown that Beca catches immediately.

“Not true,” Beca replies, “I think it’s a great idea.”

“You do?” Chloe looks up at her expectantly, and all Beca can think about for a moment is how much she wants Chloe to look at her that way again. 

“I mean, yeah,” Beca starts to feel hot under the weight of Chloe’s stare. “If the way you taught me the other day is any indication, I think you’ll be a great teacher.” Beca tenses when she feels Chloe’s fingertips ghost over her palm, tracing the lines of her hand and the rise and dip of her knuckles.

“Thank you, Beca,” Chloe says, the gratitude in her voice evident. It makes Beca smile, knowing that she could bring any ounce of comfort to Chloe’s life, and she hopes that she’ll get the chance to do it again. Before Beca can think about it any further, Chloe’s hand has moved away from hers and onto Beca’s textbook, beginning her spiel about postzygotic isolating mechanisms and Beca is struggling to tear her gaze away from Chloe’s lips long enough to catch a word of information. 

*

“So, that’s all the time we have for today,” Chloe says after checking her watch. “You seemed a lot more confident about the material today, which is really good!”

“It’s probably because I’ve been paying attention in class the past few times,” Beca says and Chloe bites back a laugh, but Beca finds herself wanting to hear the sound. 

“Hey, do you want to grab a coffee? I was supposed to have class, but it looks like my professor’s out sick,” Chloe asks as she looks up from her phone. 

Beca knows that this is a crucial point in her relationship with Chloe. Saying yes to Chloe’s offer will likely make this a regular thing, and it will leave Beca constantly wanting more from the redhead. On the other hand, if she says no, Chloe probably won’t ask again, and it will close the door on any hopes Beca had of getting to know Chloe outside of their bi-weekly discussions of biology. Beca knows that, from a self-preservation standpoint, she should say no. She knows that getting coffee with Chloe will make her want to get lunch with Chloe, and lunch will become dinner, and dinner will become drinks, and drinks will become clubbing, and clubbing will become making out in the bathroom stall of whatever shithole campus bar they wander into after a long night. 

Beca can’t say she doesn’t want those things, but she can say that she does  _ not  _ catch feelings for people, so she should say no. Every bone in Beca’s body is begging, screaming, for her to say no, but somehow, Beca ends up smiling at her tutor and even though she can think of two dozen reasons why not, she says: “Sure, why not?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading and leaving feedback!
> 
> come talk to me on tumblr, my url is sentientaltype, and on twitter @olverburg!
> 
> if you have any ideas for this fic or any prompts, please leave them in my ask box on tumblr!

**Author's Note:**

> thank you guys so much for reading!
> 
> i'm going to try really hard to update once a week on Wednesdays or Thursdays, but it's exam season so I'm sorry if chapter 2 is late!
> 
> come talk to me/leave suggestions on tumblr, my url is sentientaltype, and on twitter @olverburg


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